A Boy Named Medusa

By Johnny Tsokos

Medusa. The name itself conjures up a range of conflicting emotions from immortal terror to dangerous curiosity. This is Medusa, the lover. An icon reimagined. A cruel monster of mythology, malevolent and frightful, cursed for a defiance of the gods. The personification of horror and rage recreated; a legendary figure turning to stone every living thing that looks upon it.

Here is a side of the monster no one yet knows: alone and longing for a lost love, equally wanting yet desperate, at times regretful on the verge of perpetual defeat and desperation. Flawed and betrayed yet still persistent in his struggle to be reunited with the woman he once loved, on his path of self-discovery and the ultimate acceptance of this punished life.

This unexpected love story is told from the point of view of this iconic yet tortured character. A Boy Named Medusa connects the pieces of an existence in the face of futility while crossing time and conventional beliefs, daringly defying the preconceptions of a Legend.

As this story unfolds, so the question shall be answered: Has the monster resurfaced in a new shape or is this all an anthem for the unloved?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Johnny Tsokos
• Release date: May 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311935113

Johnny Tsokos

Johnny Tsokos is a passionate storyteller with twenty-five years in the world of marketing, writing and commercial design. Born and raised in Queens, NY to Greek and Italian immigrants, he now has a budding 15-year-old son of his own. Johnny holds a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts from the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC. Having journeyed across many cities, picking up inspiration throughout his life, Johnny has found a home in Miami. He independently published an arts & literary zine called Velocitylab for three years, with thousands of copies in circulation. Johnny curiously blends genres exploring the innermost depths of love and loss in his work.

Book preview

I loved you once long ago, but it wasn’t until I lost you that I gave my feelings any thought. How much time has passed since then – days, months? Is it even worth considering now? I imagine it is not. I have been destroyed and reborn enough times to shatter even the strongest faith found within a mortal man. Enough times to lose count. So, today I am starting over. Without you.

Alone now in this isolating room, unusually cold despite the diffused sunlight creeping in from the single window as I have found myself for so many days. I am beginning to think of you and the love we once had. The love I may have once had for you. The one that I am admittedly now empty without – wondering aloud as if only to await my echo’s hollow response: This life has become an exercise in the futility of logic.

You may still call my practices born out of Superstition; that which do not make sense to anyone but me. I know much of what I have done in the past never pleased you.

This last statement might even cause you to sit up in that kind of reserved outrage you have claimed as a trait. Was it my staccato use of words – chopping through thoughts, disregarding grammar and structure? I have never given my mind’s orchestra proper instruments with new strings and keys, so those musicians have detuned and identified with their own disjointed sound. Sometimes I have come together with them, using my arms openly, flamboyantly – others called me Maestro. But I had the temper of a scorned god and the taste for revenge like a dictator caught in a desperate kind of hopelessness. My orchestra had no reason to admire me, yet I hated them every time they disagreed with me. When they would agree, I believed it was a sycophantic gesture and I hated them even more.

Ruthless indeed. That could explain much of my unhappiness. My mind’s orchestra is forever inside me, inescapable, and I will never be rid of the lot. I feel the reverberation of their well-crafted cacophony all the way down to the pit of my stomach. I see them erupting, emerging within my reflection in every mirror. There was a time when I used to simply cover these mirrors, but I soon could not keep up with my own obsession. That is why I have taken these betraying mirrors down. You would never recognize this place anymore. If you can remember how I was never able to explain the pile of old and dark blankets I kept, you’ll see I cannot hide this truth now. In order to have maintained a sort of sanity within these walls, though somewhat failing, I uncovered the mirrors every time you visited. That was perhaps the only time I made an effort to conceal this terrifying side of me.

You never seemed to think much of my meaningless tasks; why would I attempt to explain yet another? And above all else, why would it be that one?

I have removed every reflective pane now, leaving behind tiny holes in the walls sprouting miniature veins of cracked paint surrounded by the slightest film of fine white dust. This is the logical thing to do. I will never see those reflective panes again. I will never see myself again.

Now if I could find a way to remove this old orchestra with their undesirable instruments from every corner of my mind: I plan to unlearn my musical talents.

Day Two.

I am trying as best I can – struggling, in fact – to make better sense of any correlation between the perceived and the real; to bring these dangerously elusive thoughts into better understandable words, ready for consumption by others’ minds.

It is true, classical mythology is intangible, existing now only as memories would, or as a set of beliefs, a lineage of stories. But what of modern mythology? The idea that each one of us is a legend in this time, caught in an undying test, doomed to repeat a single, horrifyingly mundane or perhaps destructive task, to live within the limitations of a judgment passed on us.

I cannot be alone in subscribing to this belief; this idea. There must be some who are already certain to have dedicated themselves to uncovering more of this mystery, this phenomenon of the existence after the judgment and punishment exacted based on others’ perception of what is right and what it is wrong. Of a life lived in doomed repetition of the same ill fate.

This is precisely why I have thrown everything you have written in the trash along with everything you have said. Yours has been a belief of deliverance from the judgment of our atrocities. Even if eventually. But when does this eventually arrive?

These few rooms are nearly empty now and the walls unadorned, save for those random constellations of holes where once were nails. I owe these walls nothing!

I am sitting within a welcomed silence at the single table – a square-shaped piece of wood perched upon four stout wooden legs – near the only window in the room. Upon this table is a glass filled with a drink so cloudy and thick. I see clearer and am thinner in my movements when I swallow it. I speak foreign languages without moving my lips and see with my eyes shut.

Today – for the first in a long time – I felt like writing you a letter, despite having destroyed the ones you have written for me.

From this very table I wanted to begin my letter by dating the top right hand corner of the paper – proudly, you see, as if I alone have created this new day – and to have signed the bottom with my initial only. Anyway, who else would it be? The only four words I would have written between the pale blue lines might read like a single regretful cloud on an otherwise unblemished sky:

I AM STILL ALONE.

And I would mean those words; intend them to touch you at your core. Only you. But I have no paper and perhaps the meaning of those words has changed by now anyway and I am suddenly empowered. Or is this empowerment more my acceptance of these words that have created some illusion of confidence? Should I instead whisper into the sky and create that one single cloud, laden with regret?

I am afraid the words I would speak shall fall, destroyed, from my window and land beside the discarded mirrors lying among the shadows below. There you shall also find other familiar items, indeed among them your letters.

My own punishment, raising me into some legend, dictates the things I can never alter but wish so desperately to have the power to. Therein lies the essence explaining the bare walls, the mirrors banished from around me, and most importantly my solitary life. I never cared enough to judge myself or exact any self-destruction through behaviors; true, I never considered myself anything other than willingly transparent to the world, its gods and its judges.

Damned are the mirrors of this world and anyone who lays an eye on my naked face reflected through them. Damned more are those who see me for myself – what I have become. Damn you for putting me here.

Day Three.

Nothing can compare to the times long since past, when you knew me. I was careless then. My feelings were shallow and any desperation I felt was because I searched for other things. Indescribable things. All the time I spent not knowing any better, not knowing the Truth. So much has changed without warning.

I can now say more appropriately: since then, I have been searching for ways to become further completed. This